~ After 50 years, clearly gaming is lifelong

Messing around on Steam and Minecraft

Over the weekend I let my War Worlds empire take a breather – all I did was answer the Sit Rep. I left the Wibbit empire 100% crushed, and am moving on to bigger and better things – trying to expand out and touch two neighboring empires.

And needing a break from World of Tanks as well, I got back onto my Steam account. Which they are very good at getting you to buy and install new games on – I mean, 50 cents ? Sign me up, I’ll buy it ! Before I knew it I had installed three new games and messed around with some others.

My Flatout 2 experience continues as I try to finish the campaigns on Street Racer level. This is a very accessible driving game and I got a bonus – I even had my boy playing it. His current Ipad game of choice is some free racing game, which includes all the elements of typical video game grinds – unlocks, races, earning money for upgrades, and slickly rendered versions of real life cars which he gets to drive. So Flatout was fun for him to mess with.

My Minecraft world Biomass got reopened and I found myself wandering the world again re familiarizing myself with what I’ve wrought. What I would like to do continues to be connecting all my explored areas via railroad (minecart), which requires massive grinding to find enough iron. I’d also like to find some of the new biomes in it – I have no dark wood, and no mesas discovered. And I never have found a horse either.

With Minecraft I can also get slave labor – the kids will log in from the other PC in the house. We have a total of two licenses, or I could start a three player game. And they help me out doing various things such as mining for iron/diamonds, or working the farm. Slop the hogs out on the North Forty son !

I installed Fallen Earth and started playing that as well – for whatever reason it’s a fun experience. No death penalty (other than a debuff), and I’m a clone wandering a post-apocalyptic world doing quests and trying to get better at making stuff. The game is apparently, at its heart, a crafting game. That would be great, except I’ve only used a bare few of the items which I have crafted as I grind my way up skill levels.

Fallen Earth has pretty basic graphics and an “Old Everquest” look to it, along with nasty lag issues. But creating a melee character and figuring out the game has been a very fun diversion. One of the important questions as always, is money – will they be able to extract any from me ? I’m not sure I can see why I’d bother, at the moment, and I don’t plan to start digging into all the web information about the game either. I just need to figure out where the scenic overlook is on Clinton FARM…..

And of course, (most) all Steam games have achievements which I can’t stop myself from trying to achieve. I am too goal oriented sometimes.